Facebook hands over 3,000 Russia-linked ads. So what next?

Zuckerberg should employ a "team of moaners and cynics".

Facebook aids Congressional investigators. But is a better solution for Zuckerberg to employ a team of moaners and cynics?

Facebook has agreed to hand over more than 3,000 Russia-linked advertisements to Congress, as investigators continue to probe Russian agencies' use of social platforms to influence the outcome of the 2016 Presidential election.

According to the New York Times, 470 Russian accounts were used to create fake American activists in marginal states, many of whom criticised Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, or urged voters to back Donald Trump.

On Facebook Live, founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, said: "I care deeply about the democratic process and protecting its integrity," adding that he did not want anyone using his platform's tools to undermine democracy. "That's not what we stand for," he said.

The company's mission statement is "Bringing the world closer together".

Facebook's 2016 revenues were $27.6 billion, which equates to nearly $14 for each of the platform's claimed two billion monthly users. At its 2012 IPO, Facebook's revenues were roughly one dollar per user, so the company has little financial incentive today to increase human staffing to monitor content more closely, unless it is forced to do so.

However, earlier this week COO Sheryl Sandberg promised that the company would both increase human oversight of its advertising tools and change the way that ads are targeted, following further criticism that the platform has also been used to target people with offensive content based on their race or religion.

It seems the company now has no choice but to act.

The apparent ‘heat seeking' nature of Facebook algorithms means that any post that is Liked or shared is regarded as engaging and positive, even if a user has - for whatever reason - published something offensive, or shared bad news.

But perhaps the best way to reverse Facebook's run of bad publicity is for it to do something much more imaginative and counter-intuitive: it should employ a team of cynics, moaners, and naysayers to counter the organisation's relentless Californian optimism.

Facebook is supposedly a global platform, after all, and not everyone lives in Zuckerberg's world of pastel t-shirts and tech evangelism. Facebook should employ the kind of people who say, "You know what? That's a really dumb idea."